Tmi Decision By Puc Is Right

January 27, 1993|The Morning Call

The near meltdown in Unit 2 reactor of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant nearly 14 years ago was the nation's worst nuclear accident. And it is still costing the electric customers of Metropolitan Edison Co. and its parent, General Public Utilities.

However, the state Public Utility Commission last week drew the line on how much more customers will pay as a result of the accident. The PUC denied Met-Ed's request to charge customers about $11 million a year for the next 20 years to pay for dismantling the disabled reactor. Since the accident, the company's customers have paid about $125 million in clean-up costs and another $443 million in plant costs. That's more than enough.

The cost of decommissioning nuclear power plants is usually figured into an electric company's rates. In normal circumstances that's as justified as recouping the cost of building the enormously expensive generating plants. But what happened at Three Mile Island wasn't business as usual.

What is usual in any business is risk. Mistakes, mismanagement and accidents are the kinds of risks that cost businesses money. Met-Ed and GPU have passed some of those costs along to their customers, but enough is enough. The PUC was right to make the companies shoulder the rest of the burden.